"I only said it for fun; just to make a little commotion among the self-satisfied Fifth. I never cared a brass farthing about it."
"All the same, you are cleverer than most of the girls in the Fifth," Nat persisted. "It's absurd to think of you being bottom. Did you do it on purpose?"
"Well, as I didn't care a scrap if I occupied the place and you cared very much, I thought I might as well rob you of it," Monica confessed, laughing.
Nat sat down in a chair and gazed at Monica wonderingly.
"You are a queer girl. I see it all now. You pretended you wanted to be top and that the stuff on the walls was to help you to remember the work, when it was really to try and knock something into my head. And always making me hear you say your prep, just when I was off for a game of chess—— Whatever did you do it for?"
"Oh, just for fun. You aren't stupid enough to be always at the bottom of the form, you know, Nat."
"You mean you aren't," retorted Nat. "Still," she added after a moment's consideration, "though I'm sure it's good of you to take so much trouble over me, I think I'd almost rather be bottom than sit in a room decorated in the same way again."
"Perhaps we can manage it without such extreme measures next term," Monica said optimistically.
"If my luck holds out. However, I've a sort of feeling that's it's going to change for the better. Something tells me that next Saturday, when St. Etheldreda's wins the hockey match, I shall not slip up in the goal circle instead of shooting the winning goal; that on Speech Day the following Wednesday I shall not make my entry as Cæsar's ghost at the wrong cue, as I did last year. You see, I feel that I have you as my mascot now," and Nat heaved a huge sigh of supreme content.
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